Tressel has a long and documented history of denial. He didn’t know that a star quarterback at Youngstown received more than $100,000 and a new car from Trustees, even though he told him to go see those same Trustees for guidance. He didn’t know about Maurice Clarett‘s litany of rules violations, gifts, and downward spiral, despite professing that he spent more time with the troubled athlete than any other player under his tenure. Sure, mistakes were made, but it was okay because he was More Than a Coach as a biography of the man proclaimed. He was revered as a dignitary, downright saintly even, by not just fans of THEOhio State University but sports fans in general. It was all an elaborate fiction, though, as the Sports Illustrated piece revealed. Tressel wasn’t clean, he was crafty, and he got away with it because sports fans and many in the sports media are amongst the most easily deceived and gullible people on the face of the planet.

The truly astounding revelation isn’t that a beloved father figure in sports was exposed as a fraud. It’s that the sports media is so scandalized by transgressions in an inherently corrupt system known as the NCAA. The problem is bigger than Tressel, new cars from Trustees, new houses for parents, shady scholarship grants, and people looking the other way. The problem lies in an amateur collegiate sports program that rakes in untold millions of dollars for corporations, Universities, broadcast networks, cable outlets, and the NCAA as a whole on the backs of kids who are given conflicting messages: you are not allowed to reap what benefits we reap from your sacrifices and talents, but take it if you can get it.

Fans of college sports can and will use whatever warped reasoning they have for their continued and undying support of programs that create ethical quandaries and use up young men like cattle, grinding them out and dumping them off without providing anything resembling real world experience or realistic expectations for what lie ahead. They’ll tell you that these kids all know what they’re getting into, that they’re old enough to know right from wrong, and after all, they’re over eigteen years of age and as such are culpable for their behavior. All of which is true, to a point; if any of them commit a crime, they’ll stand trial as adults. That reasoning, though, applies uneven standards and expectations on young, spoiled minds that are told they’re superstars. Not that they’re going to be superstars, but that they already are. They’re told by people in positions of power, authority, and prestige that they deserve these things that are given to them, because after all, they’re valuable commodities.

Some will say that Tressel should not be held accountable for the actions of others, and that the worst he did was look the other way so that these young men’s futures weren’t jeopardized. That, however, is a gross misreading of the circumstances and willfull ingnorance of his history. More than that, though, it continues the practice of self-deception in the mainstream when it comes to college sports, which are ideally supposed to be held in that order of esteem: college first, then sports. The reality, though, is that certain sports come first. I wouldn’t deign to call it sports college, though, because that infers there’s something of value at the end of it for many of the players. The sad truth is that a great disservice is done to the athletes participating in the major sports programs through a culture of exploitation and lack of ethics in the NCAA.

For far too long, the mainstream sports media has engaged in an attitude that the ends justify the means and that the revenue brought in every year by big-time football and basketball programs only makes those colleges better and gives opportunities to other programs and students where they otherwise may not exist, as if this is somehow impossible without comprimising things like ethical behavior and personal responsibility. Those same apologists, writing columns for major news organizations, will then go on ESPN and crow about the ruination of baseball vis a vis the steroid era, the bad behavior of NFL players, the egos and brazeness of NBA players openly colluding with other players in direct violation of policy en route to a championship, and all the other things that have contributed to a time where role models are few and the concept itself is all but discouraged.

The bottom line is that it all starts somewhere, and it’s with men like Jim Tressel and programs like Ohio State. Let’s not pretend, however, that this incident is isolated. We need to start asking some real questions about not only the accepted behaviors behind the scenes as a whole but also why we’re so willing to look the other way when it doesn’t do anyone any good, especially the players themselves.

11 Responses

Education should be put back in education. Scholarships and such are targeted for sporting students and the ones who are academically inclined tend to get more of a back seat to the higher profile sports team students. While these scholarships are well funded, programs like Classics, French, Russian and Theatre are dropped at the University at Albany. They are very basic major programs! Let’s see some of that high profile scholarship money go to rescuing basic education! All schools should cut the fat in the sporting programs and NOT allow it. If a student gets a gift, then they should not get scholarship $. The emphasis from elementary school forward should be EDUCATION not sports. Makes me wonder why we score lower than many other countries with the current emphasis away from education from an early age. What do folks watch on TV the weekends? Many watch sporting events. How much do major league athletes make? WHY? Come on. EDUCATION needs to formost in our lives not sports. Bring back art and music lessons for the children. These do help improve their performance in schools and makes for a more well rounded informed individual. Sports teams are EXTRA curricular folks…. NOT required.

In days of yore, of course, college was for gentlemen (and the occasional lady), the scions of substance. A classical education wasn’t intended to advance some poor prole schlub in the marketplace – that place for the already affluent scholar was already assured.

Mind you, that model started to shift in the early 1900s, and a few of our cultural heroes from modest circumstances went to college while working themselves through. Then the post-WWII GI Bill absolutely exploded the college population, and the children of the veterans were just expected to go as a matter of course. There was now this wonderful big educational infrastructure and as a society we decided that one HAD to have a “college education” to be a respectable middle-class (or better yet, upper middle-class) American. And voila, what had been an idyllic retreat for the children of the aristocracy was now a product, the perfect product, in fact. And what better way to promote that product than sports, the things people watch on TV?

The creme de la creme of our colleges have never had to use sports as a marketing vehicle (the Yale Bowl, for example, is 90% empty at every football game except the Harvard game). And smaller select colleges such as Williams have good athletics programs, but they are rolled into the package of overall achievement. It’s the intellectual second-tier schools that need to pimp themselves. It’s nothing new, and it ain’t going away until the entire “you must go to college” ethos is blown to hell.

Thirty-plus years ago, I took a course called “Philosophy of Sport” at a regional football factory in the Southeast. I was a club lacrosse player, meaning I had no coaching apparatus watching over me and no university investment in my sport. Most my classmates were football players, in whom the university had invested a lot in order to sell the university as a leading-edge place to learn. More than one of these fellas had trouble reading aloud. I had already received a regular paycheck for sportswriting. I got the lowest grade in the class. I was shocked, shocked, and remain traumatized by the whole sordid mess. Jack Nicklaus is still supporting Tressel, and as long as guys like Jack aren’t calling for the demolition of the current structure, I doubt anybody’ll listen to you or me, Local Treasure.

Patricia, it’s funny but a lot of wealthy alumni give huge money to schools BECAUSE their athletic programs do well. TV rights to college football/basketball bring in millions to the schools that benefit all the students. Put a debate and a chess match on prime time TV and see what you bring in.

Jakester proves my point. Too much emphasis is placed on sports in our society and people wonder why we score so low in comparison? Education must be a basic. I am 44. When I was growing up the TV was called the idiot box. My parents were right. Perhaps more people need to turn off the box and turn to the books and turn on their minds. Take classes and enrich their minds with knowledge rather than sports stats. Certainly partake in sports for personal fitness, but sports should not be the focus of a college education. Monies should offset tuition costs for all and not just a select few, or to build high tech stadiums – build high tech classrooms instead. Refocus folks!!!

Gman – Unless you know a construction company that works for free you already know the answer. Do you believe scholls should be playing in hte same stadium/gyms for the 50′s 60′s? No other teams in the world do, well except the Red Sox and Cubs…

Tuition is probably linked more to the economy, inflation, and teacher/admistrative salaries and benefits, than sports.

Don’t go to a big D1 school if you don’t like sports/issues.

It would be interesting to see a survey of students, who picked their schools based on sports teams, name recognition and party index vs how many soley for classes.

I knew something was terribly wrong with OSU when I heard the University Prez or AD (can’t remember which, but they’re both supposed to be Tressel’s BOSS) say, when questioned about the scandal created by Tressel’s behavior, “I just hope he doesn’t fire ME!”. WTF?! I’m not naive enough to think that’s the only place this goes on though.

Patricia – let’s not compare UAlbany sports programs with those of Ohio State. UAlbany did NOT cut those programs in order to give more money to the athletic department – the athletic department is suffering from budget cuts just as much as the rest of the university. Do you know that the student-athlete population at UAlbany has a higher average GPA than the regular student body? Or that that trend is similar at most educational institutions?

I like sports, Jakester. I played a sport at a D1 school. A club sport. We played teams from other colleges. We just didn’t get scholarships or have special tutors or any other hand-holding.

The Yale Bowl was built in 1914 and their football team does just fine in it. You seem to have confused the real purpose of college with the encroachment of commerce and pimping athletes into the educational process.